Quick response (QR) codes have rapidly emerged as a widely used inventory tracking and identification method in transport, manufacturing, and retail industries. Their popularity is due to the proliferation of smart phones, their capability of accessing on line resources as well as its high storage capacity and speed of decoding. QR codes are used in a variety of applications, such as accessing web sites, downloading personal card information, posting information, social networks, initiating phone calls, reproducing videos or opening text documents. This versatility makes them a valuable tool in any industry that seeks to engage mobile users from printed materials. The aesthetic appearance of QR codes has received considerable attention recently due to their use in advertising, billboards, and brand identification. The main challenge of any embedding method is that they should result in codes that are decodable by standard applications, yet produce little distortion in the embedded image.
U.S. Patent application 20150324946 to Arce et al. discloses a method to aesthetically enhance QR codes which uses convex optimization to minimize a visual distortion metric subject to a constraint in the probability of correct QR decoding. The algorithm can be used to embed any color, or black and white image/graphic, into a standard QR code. It provides full area coverage, all with bounded probability of error.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,144,922 to Kawabe discloses a method in which a two-dimensional code that represents information by means of a cell dot distribution pattern, formed by having a plurality of colored cells and a logo mark, are superimposed.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,851,392 to Shinotami discloses an apparatus comprising display control unit which displays image-added two-dimensional codes in which a two-dimensional code presenting given information is superimposed on a first given image to show at least a portion of the two-dimensional code within a region where the first given image is shown
U.S. Patent application 20130112760 to Schory discloses systems and methods for the automated generation of QR codes with embedded images therein are provided. The QR code has an active, machine-readable portion and a background portion. An example system comprises an image identification module to identify a human-readable image.
U.S. Patent application 20130026241 to Sakahashi discloses a service, and a system, applications and an associated ecosystem for the consistent and reliable production, creation, generation, management and utilization of two-dimensional (2D′) barcodes (Codes') featuring embedded Images, designating the alignment position and alignment size of the embedding Images in 2D Codes and enabling the corresponding outputted Code files by the Device System to be downloaded and or showcased digitally
U.S. Patent application 20140144996 to Friedman discloses a method of generating a readable matrix code image encoding a message based on an input image and a readable matrix coding specification, comprising: calculating function areas readable to comply with a function patterns specification; determining an extent of free cells and derived cells according to a code word specification; calculating decode input values for free cells such that the appearance of the free cells compared to respective areas of the input image complies with a visual perceptual similarity criterion.